(HOST) Commentator Willem Lange recently attended a meeting of modern-day explorers, and that got him wondering if we’re still making them as tough as we used to.
(LANGE) The Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University is displaying for the first time the text of Robert Falcon Scott’s last letter to his wife, Kathleen. Displayed as a model of stoicism in the face of imminent death, and written in a flapping tent at “seventy degrees below zero,” it’s inspiring enough, and leads us to wonder if we’re still producing tough cookies the way we used to.
Scott and his men perished because of the notion that the British Navy way was the only way: hierarchy, the latest technology, and disdain for the “savages” who’d been living for millennia in what the British called “barren lands.” Scott’s expedition tried gasoline-powered tractors and Shetland ponies, both failures. Roald Amundsen’s men, who’d been skiing since they could walk, used sled dogs (which could be eaten as the loads of supplies got lighter); traveled on skis; and put up sails to take advantage of following winds. They got to the South Pole on midsummer day, December 21. Scott and his men arrived four weeks later to find the Norwegian flag. They turned around and died on the march back toward their base.
The survivors of expeditions of famous explorers rarely said anything good about their leaders. This may be because of the need to be a celebrity in order to raise financial support. Amundsen sometimes slipped out of port just ahead of creditors armed with writs of attachment. But he got the South Pole and the Northwest Passage; not bad for a bankrupt. Survivors of expeditions led by Peary, Byrd, and Scott later described those leaders privately as ambitious, unbearable jerks, and questioned whether they actually had achieved what they claimed – especially when in some cases they appeared to have contrived to leave behind any credible witnesses.
I recently attended the annual Wilderness Paddlers’ Gathering in Fairlee, surrounded by ordinary-looking people who’ve made some incredible journeys north of sixty degrees in the West and the St. Lawrence River in the East. Yet each of them looks so normal you’d never guess it.
Take one middle-aged couple. She teaches middle school; he’s a health inspector. Summertimes, they’re Lewis and Clark. They prefer rivers where meeting other people is unlikely. I discovered one of their cheery notes in a cabin on Victoria Island, north of the Northwest Passage.
My favorite is a physics professor at the University of Toronto, who’s spent over forty years traveling the deserted places of the north. A few years ago he left Yellowknife with a partner, dragging a canoe across the spring ice till the partner collapsed. George went on alone, across the tundra and along the coast to the mouth of the Coppermine River. He visited places described by early explorers in dramatic volumes that were eagerly devoured in Victorian England. As far as I know, the only record of George’s trip is a slide show.
The answer is yes; They’re still making them as tough as they used to. But they’re much more modest these days.
This is Willem Lange in East Montpelier, and I gotta get back to work.